最低生活保障制度能降低家庭贫困脆弱性吗?

Comparative Analysis on Anti-poverty Vulnerability of Urban and Rural Minimum Living Security System

本文以贫困脆弱性作为评估返贫的指标,通过2016-2018年CHARLS合并面板数据,采用PSM结合DID的方法,探究低保制度降低家庭贫困脆弱性的能力。实证发现,低保制度虽然对降低贫困脆弱性发挥了一定作用,但影响效果较小。通过进一步分析发现,城乡低保可以显著降低城市、非收入贫困家庭和非贫困脆弱家庭的贫困脆弱性,但由于存在“精英俘获”“福利依赖”等不合理现象,导致城乡低保制度并不能降低农村收入贫困家庭和贫困脆弱家庭的贫困脆弱性。本文认为,适当提高低保标准、加强农村低保制度的建设、加强低保制度瞄准精度和坚持因户施策等措施,可以进一步增强制度反贫困脆弱性功能。

In 2020,China will eliminate absolute poverty under the current standards,and the overall regional poverty will be solved. Later,the goal of poverty governance was changed to“consolidate the achievements of poverty alleviation”. Therefore,when assessing the effect of anti-poverty policies,it is necessary to shift from the traditional expost assessment of poverty incidence and poverty degree to the forward-looking indicators that can predict the risk of returning to poverty. From the existing research,the academic research on the minimum living standard policy mainly focuses on its ability to alleviate income poverty,but under the guidance of the goal of“preventing a large-scale return to poverty”,using poverty vulnerability as the evaluation index of the minimum living standard policy has stronger policy value.Thus,this paper explores the following questions:What are the differences in the impact of the minimum living security system on the poverty vulnerability of different categories of households? And what factors affect the ability of the minimum living security system to reduce the vulnerability of family poverty? Answering these questions can help us further improve the system design of the rural minimum living security system and effectively prevent large-scale poverty.When exploring these issues,it is obvious that the problem of self selection will be involved,that is,low-income families and non-low-income families are not randomly allocated,and may be affected by personal characteristics,regional development level and other factors. More difficult is that they will be affected by some unobservable factors. For example,the social network of families receiving“human protection”is also different from that of non-low-income families. All of these will cause selective errors to the final results.To obtain the causal relationship between the minimum living security system and the vulnerability of poverty,this paper adopts the method of tendency score matching(PSM)combined with the double difference(DID). The propensity score matching matches individuals with similar characteristics on the basis of observable variables,so as to reduce the difference between the treatment group and the control group in observable variables. Under the condition that these controllable variables are similar,we can think that the matched non low-income households belong to“insured but uninsured households”,and get the average treatment effect recently. DID excludes some factors that do not change over time. In terms of the“elite capture”caused by strong social capital and the“welfare dependence”caused by the rich groups on subsistence allowances,we have reason to believe that their social capital and the inertia of becoming low-income households will not change in a short period of time. At this time,DID can well solve the endogenous problems caused by these two phenomena.In this paper,we use PSM and DID to solve this problem. This paper uses the data from the China Health and Elderly Care Tracking Survey(CHARLS)in 2015 and 2018,and adopts the method of PSM and DID to empirically test the above issues.The empirical conclusion shows that. First,in the total sample,families who have obtained the minimum living standard can significantly reduce their poverty vulnerability by 1.6%,but this is not up to 1/4 of the standard deviation of the sample poverty vulnerability. Therefore,although the minimum living standard can significantly reduce the family poverty vulnerability,the impact is small. Second,through the analysis of heterogeneity,there is an obvious gap in the function of urban and rural minimum living security systems in reducing poverty vulnerability. The urban minimum security system can significantly reduce the poverty vulnerability by 8.7%,while the rural minimum security system has no significant impact on poverty vulnerability. Third,in the grouping of poor families by income and vulnerability,the low income security system has a significant and greater impact on non-income poor families and non poor vulnerable families,which can reduce the poverty vulnerability of non income poor families by 8.1% and non poor vulnerable families by 14.5% respectively;The impact on income poor families and poor vulnerable families is not significant. Fourth,the role of the minimum security system in reducing poverty vulnerability shows a time lag. In the total sample,only after obtaining the minimum security qualification for more than 7 years can the poverty vulnerability of families be significantly reduced,and obtaining the minimum security qualification for more than 11 years can significantly reduce the poverty vulnerability of families by 11.2%. Its time lag is also characterized by heterogeneity,and the results of heterogeneity analysis are similar to those before.The above findings reveal that China’s minimum living security system still has the following problems in reducing poverty vulnerability. First,on the whole,although the minimum living security system can reduce the vulnerability of poverty,it has less impact. Second,because the urban minimum security system and its welfare superposition are obviously better than those in rural areas,there is a huge gap between urban and rural minimum security systems in reducing poverty vulnerability,and urban areas are obviously better than rural areas. Third,the allocation of minimum living security resources may be“biased”. That is to say,the failure to allocate the minimum living security resources in a reasonable way has a far greater impact on the non income poor and non poor vulnerable families than on the income poor and poor vulnerable families,and the minimum living security is powerless to reduce the poverty vulnerability of the income poor and poor vulnerable families. Fourth,the minimum living standard has a long time lag in reducing poverty vulnerability. The study found that the poverty vulnerability of families cannot be significantly reduced within 6 years of becoming a low-income household.Based on the findings of this study,in order to better achieve the goal of“consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation”,this paper proposes the following policy recommendations:First,appropriately improve the standard of minimum living allowances and enhance the quality of poverty alleviation. Second,gradually unify the urban and rural minimum living security system,and effectively link the achievements of poverty alleviation with rural revitalization. Third,strengthen the aiming accuracy of the minimum assurance system. Fourth,establish a hierarchical and classified social assistance system.